anyone know much about UPS systems ?

I want one of the the CCTV system at work (old pc + camera power)


looking around.... the cheap ones will give 5 min of power which is no where near enough....

the £150+ will give about 40min of power.... which isnt really great either...


anyone bought a cheap one with a dead battery on ebay and then hooked it upto a car battery ?


ok... a car battery isnt perfect.... but its not like itll be used a lot....  and should last for bloody ages ?

can you run the CCTV system off a laptop? them small batteries give upto 3hours of power...
or get one where you can replace the cdrom with an extra battery & get 6-8hours

nope, all runs from a pci card


wich Id thought fo that before I bought the card !

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=98546&C=SO&U=strat15

Car battery FTW!!!


UPS isnt not really designed to keep things going for ages, just to keep them on long enough to save work and safely shutdown (or for a generator to kick in).

Eggs plan isnt bad at all to be fair - although youd need to figure out how long the battey will last whilst powering that USB device and the camera but should still beat your other options. Just make sure you keep an eye on the battery degredation! Its also going to be expensive if you have to buy all the kit from scratch. If you have a spare lappy kicking about great - if not and youd need to fork out for one then just buy a big f*ck off UPS that will run it all for ages.


But I stick by the car battery!!

Id go with the usb thingie.... and I have a spair laptop that would probebly be able to run it.... but Ive just forked out a load on a fancy PCI card @(


think Ill get an el-cheapo ups on ebay and car battery it then


p.s. its not so much a big deal for the cctv, I dont think anyone creative enough to cut the power would bother breaking in anyway.... but the same power will also power the till, which needs 12v to open

MGE can be good but Ive seen plenty die soon.

You cant go wrong with an APC

GEIMV are pretty good too. Still got some of those running from years ago!